The international conference on democratic decentralization

Abstract

From 23 to 28 May 2000, 2,762 academics, officials, and activists participated in the International Conference on Democratic Decentralization, held in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. The conference was organized by the Kerala State Planning Board as part of an attempt to evaluate the experience of four years of the People's Campaign for the Ninth Plan, Kerala's extensive experiment in local democracy and decentralized planning as mechanisms for development. The large number and range of participants made the conference much more than a local evaluation, as India-wide and international comparisons were supplemented by extensive theoretical discussions, particularly in the academic portion of the conference. While most participants came from Kerala, several attended from other Indian states and more than thirty foreign participants came from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Haiti, Brazil, Sri Lanka, England, and Sweden. The Cuban and Vietnamese ambassadors to India attended the entire conference and made comments about their nations' decentralization policies at the final plenary session.     

Reflections on the Kyoto conference on global warming

The Third Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was held in Kyoto in December 1997. It ended successfully with the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, which lays down internationally binding provisions for handling the problem of global warming in the twenty‐first century, but the negotiation process was extraordinarily difficult, due to the complex nature of the issue of global warming, and to the fact that the national interests of every nation were closely involved. As Japan's ambassador for global environmental affairs, Toshiaki Tanabe was chief negotiator for Japan, and gives here an insider's view of how that successful outcome was reached. The requirement for Japan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent is a heavy burden, he says, and poses a serious challenge.     

11th international social justice conference, Berlin 2006

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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11^th international social justice conference, Berlin 2006